Openness & Magnanimity

Openness & Magnanimity

Practicing sustained concentration—or mindfulness—enables us to overcome preconceived beliefs that often limit our experience and our awareness. All too often, these concepts prevent us from finding creative solutions to problems as well as from seeing the potential in a new challenge. Through mindfulness and the practice of “letting go,” you’re able to uncover new perspectives and approach each situation with a fresh awareness every time. You’ll learn to take time to look at each moment anew—whether it’s a new dimension, a new solution, or a new way to see a colleague, a friend or family member.

Coming Into the Practice

Find a comfortable seat and close your eyes. Breathe slowly. Let the length of your inhale match or exceed the length of your exhale. Observe your breath and feel the calming sensation of the flow of the your breath.

Focus on balancing and regulating our metabolism and mood – addressing certain parts of body to balance hormones throughout our bodies. Place tongue on upper palette to connect to higher self. Connect the heart and mind. Able to connect to this part of brain and be more open to new ways of looking at problems and challenges Higher more open part of the mind.

Aura of light in everything. is in way we are able to accept light and magnify light throughout our body.

Breath to space behind eyes – lots of light. Place chin down and honor yourself.

Feel gravity in bones in legs and breathe in light into heart and body – press down through thighs/feet to knees to feel your foundation.

Mantra: OM for sense of connection and well-being. Repeat OM on your exhale.

Once the mind is calm, feel the echo of the mantra – no need to repeat it. Like the sound of the string of a harp after it is plucked – feel and hear the echo of your mantra.

Reach hands high and let energy flow out fingers – feel the length of the spine – gratitude for all the spine allows us to do.

Asana 1.

Seated twists, heart opening – backbends with chair, child pose.

Hands knees to extend opposite hand/leg – invite low ribs into body. Open space in heart and mind – reconnect tongue with – cultitvate graditude – when we connect with ourselves with gratitude – others feel that gratitude and want to be with us, work with us.

Bring hand in front of heart and switch – exhale as you switch and keep switching. Exhale whatever is not needed you’re able to inhale what you need what will serve you in your work, with your family with yourself. Amazing for our immunity – cleansing and recirculating. Installing gratitude, Keep expression easy and soft.

Reach hands high and let energy flow out fingers – feel the length of the spine – gratitude for all the spine allows us to do.

Asana 2.

Step wide to Warrior II – Reverse Warrior II

Practice for let go of preconceptions, for the tendency to attach to outcomes, meditation for a wandering mind. The good news is that any level you choose to work with is going to make a difference.

Step forward to Warrior 1 – back bends

Avidya makes you believe that the way you think or feel things are is the way they actually are. You can step past this misperception by looking at what your mind habitually tells you and questioning its conclusions about reality. Then, go a step further and notice how feelings create thoughts, and thoughts create feelings—and how the reality they construct for you is exactly that: a construct!

Open your heart to let go of these preconceptions. Open yourself to seeing a colleague or a situation in a different way. Clean the slate and look at it as if it’s the first time you’re seeing this person or experiencing this situation. It may be having to go to your weekly staff meeting that you dread. How can you bring something to the table that will engage you with your team? What ideas do you have that you’re holding back?

Asana IV

Vrksasana (Tree Pose)

On a deeper level, it’s what keeps you from seeing that your conception of “me”—”my personality,” “my self”—is not stable and is certainly not permanent, that just as your body is an ever-shifting configuration of atoms, so your internal sense of self consists of thoughts about who you are (as in “I’m pretty” or “I’m confused”), feelings like happiness or restlessness, and moods such as depression or hopefulness—all of which are subject to change.

You can increase your awareness of your connections to others by listening better and by practicing kindness—but also by sinking your awareness into the heart center and trying to tune in to others from that interior place. You increase your consciousness of yourself by noticing your blind spots, or by noticing your emotions and their effect in the body.

Meditation: RAIN

Recognize that is happening

Allow life to be just as it is

Investigate with an intimate and caring attention

Non-identification – rest in natural awareness

Sit quietly, close your eyes, and take a few full breaths. Bring to mind a current situation in which you feel stuck, one that elicits a difficult reaction such as anger or fear, or hopelessness. It may be a conflict with a family member, a situation at work/school, or a conversation you now regret. Take time to enter the experience-visualize the scene or situation, remember the words spoken, sense the most distressing moments. Contacting the charged essence of the story is the starting place for exploring the healing presence of RAIN.

Recognize What is Happening: As you reflect on this situation, ask yourself, “What is happening inside me right now?” What sensations are you most aware of? What emotions? Is your mind filled with churning thoughts? Take a moment to become aware of your “felt sense” of the situation as a whole. Can you feel how the experience is living in your heart and body, as well as in your mind?

Allow Life to Be Just as It Is: Send a message to your heart to “let be” this experience. Find in yourself the willingness to pause and accept that in these moments, “what is…is.” You can experiment with mentally whispering words like “yes,” “I consent,” or “let be.” You might find yourself saying yes while your body and mind painfully contracted in resistance and saying “no.” That’s a natural part of the process. At this point in RAIN, you are noticing what is true, and intending not to judge, push away, or control what you find.

Investigate With an Intimate Attention: Now begin to explore what you are experiencing more closely, calling on your natural interest and curiosity about your inner life. You might ask yourself, “What about what I’m feeling most wants my attention?” or “What most wants my acceptance?” Pose your questions gently, with your inner voice kind and inviting.

Notice where you feel the experience most distinctly in your body. Are you aware of heat, tightness, pressure, aches, squeezing? When you have found the most intense part of your physical experience, bring it into your face, letting your expression mirror, and even exaggerate, what you are feeling in your body. What emotions are you aware of as you do this? Fear? Anger? Grief? Shame?

As you continue to investigate, you might find it helpful to ask, “What am I believing?” If this leads to a lot of thinking, drop it. But you might find that a very distinct belief emerges almost as soon as you ask. Do you believe that you not meeting expectations that you or someone else has? Do you feel that hat someone will reject you or that you will not be able to handle whatever is around the corner? How does this belief live in your body? What are the sensations? Tightness? Soreness? Burning? Hollowness?

As before, send the message of “yes,” “I consent,” or “let be” and allow yourself to feel the fullness or intensity of the difficult experience. As you contact and allow what is happening, what do you notice? Is there any softening in your body and heart? Can you sense more openness or space? Or does the intention to allow bring up more tension, judgment, and fear?

Now ask the place of most difficulty, “What do you want from me?” or “What do you need from me?” Does this suffering part of you want recognition? Acceptance? Forgiveness? Love? You might offer yourself a wise message or an energetic, tender embrace. You might gently place your hand on your heart. Feel free to experiment with ways of befriending your inner life-whether through words or touch, images or energy. Discover how your attention might become more intimate and loving.

Nonidentification: Rest in Natural Awareness: As you offer this unconditional, kind presence to your inner life, sense the possibility of relaxing and being that awareness. Like an ocean with waves on the surface, feel yourself as the tender, wakeful openness that includes arising and passing sensations, emotions, thoughts. Can you sense how who you are is not identified by or hitched to any particular wave of fear or anger or hurt? Can you sense how the waves on the surface belong to your experience but cannot injure or alter the measureless depth and vastness of your being? Take some moments, as long as you’d like, to simply rest in this spacious and kind awareness, allowing whatever arises in your body or mind to freely come and go. Know this natural awareness as the innermost truth of who you are.